US Secretary of State’s visit will come some two weeks before Republican presidential candidate Romney arrives.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will come to Israel on July 16 for her
first visit in almost two years, the State Department announced
Thursday.

Her trip, the last leg of an eight-country swing that will also
take her to Egypt, will come some two weeks before presumptive Republican
presidential candidate Mitt Romney is expected in the country for a brief visit.
Clinton was last here in September 2010.

Clinton, who left Washington on
Thursday, is scheduled to meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in
France on Friday. The State Department said this meeting was part of “her
ongoing consultations with senior Palestinian and Israeli leaders,” and that she
would “discuss both parties efforts to pursue a dialogue and build on President
Abbas’s exchange of letters with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.”

In
Israel on July 16-17, the statement said, she will meet with Israeli leaders “to
discuss peace efforts and a range of regional and bilateral issues of mutual
concern.”

Abbas is also scheduled to meet in Paris with new French
President François Hollande.

One Israeli government official quipped that
while it was “very good” that Abbas was going to Paris to meet international
leaders, “it would be more conducive to peace if he were to meet with Israeli
leaders.”

“He does not need to make peace with France, but rather with
Israel,” the official added.

Abbas has said that he will not meet
Netanyahu until Israel freezes settlement construction, agrees to negotiations
on the basis of the 1967 lines, and releases a number of Palestinian prisoners.
Netanyahu has said he will meet Abbas without any preconditions.

Clinton,
according to the State Department announcement, will attend in Paris the third
meeting of the Friends of the Syrian People – a group of western and Arab
countries trying to end the crisis in Syria – and “consult with colleagues on
steps to increase pressure on the Assad regime and to support UN-Arab League
special envoy [Kofi] Annan’s efforts to end the violence and facilitate a
political transition to a post- Assad Syria.”

Clinton will come to Israel
from Egypt, where she will be the highest ranking US official to visit since the
election of President Mohamed Mursi last week. The purpose of her visit is to
“express the United States’ support for Egypt’s democratic transition and
economic development.”

During her two-day visit she will meet with senior
government officials, civil society, and business leaders, and inaugurate the US
Consulate in Alexandria.

In between her stops to France, Egypt and
Israel, Clinton will also travel to Tokyo to attend a conference on Afghanistan,
and then on to Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.